The Emotional Teaspoon Syndrome

A quote from "Harry Potter" makes me want to coin a phrase for people who are unwittingly emotional.

There's a scene in the book Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix where Hermione explains the boys why Harry's girlfriend candidate behaved oddly (implied spoilers for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by the way, and later for later books):

'Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings towards Harry are, anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly.'

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, 'One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode.'

'Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have,' said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.

(Emphasis added.)

The thing that catches my attention here in retrospect is that, actually, Ron Weasley is emotional as anything. It certainly makes him act funny, too. It's just that he'd need Hermione to explain those emotions to him also, and then he'd deny it anyway.

An example in the previous book (Goblet of Fire) is when Ron hears Hermione is going out with Viktor Krum, a student from another school and a famous Quidditch player. Up to then, Ron had been excited about Krum being there, but now he's suddenly furious that Hermione is seeing someone who's Harry's rival competitor in the Triwizard Tournament and could be using her to get at Harry.

It seems that it's perfectly clear in Ron's mind that he's angry because Hermione is consorting with the enemy. Not at all because he's jealous... that someone else is dating Hermione... with whom Ron falls in love as they grow up during the series. Nope. Not at all.

Different people can be more or less emotional, more or less reason-oriented. Yet, people who won't admit to being driven by emotion and instead appeal to reason in every case are often simply not aware of their emotions. The reasons they supposedly follow are unconscious confabulations, automatic rationalizations of their mind. Since they assume their reasons must be based on reason, they never think to question this, and thus act and think irrationally.

Anecdotally, this seems to be common with men – no wonder considering how and by what stereotypes they're raised.

The lesson from it all is this: Just because you think you're a teaspoon doesn't mean you don't have an emotional range. If you want to be rational, you need to be aware of it.